Iceland review - 2013, Page 65

ICELAND REVIEW 63
What are the northern
lights, or aurora bore-
alis? French philoso-
pher Pierre Gassendi named the phenomenon in
1621 after Aurora, the Roman goddess of dawn,
and Boreas, the Greek name for the north wind.
This natural light display in the sky, in the
high-latitude regions, is caused by the collision
of energetically-charged particles with atoms in
the high-altitude atmosphere, 80 km (50 miles)
above us. The charged particles originate in the
magnetosphere and solar winds and are directed
by the earth’s magnetic field into the atmosphere.